


figure studies

by hecleretical



Category: Pyre (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, ending is kind of abrupt but i like it that way tbh, hell froze. pigs fly. i wrote 2k words of volfred sandalwood pov, reader in this uses ey/em
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-08
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-14 13:55:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29296968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hecleretical/pseuds/hecleretical
Summary: But he refuses to shut himself away in a corner and hide. Two can be stubborn and immovable, and he *will* have the full use of his own Triumvirate’s Blackwagon, stars all be damned. (A rare curse-- this pettiness must be getting to him more than he had thought.)So it is that one cold and rainy night, somewhere in the middle of the Deathless Tempest, Volfred is sitting in the kitchen of the Blackwagon over tea and his pipe as Hedwyn emerges from his shared quarters.or, volfred sandalwood offers an odd reassurance.
Relationships: Hedwyn & Volfred Sandalwood
Comments: 1
Kudos: 5





	figure studies

**Author's Note:**

  * For [laughingpineapple](https://archiveofourown.org/users/laughingpineapple/gifts).



It is still unpleasant, being a stranger in his own Blackwagon; Saps mostly sleep in the day, to catch the sun, so at least he does not have to see many of his new compatriots unduly long if he does not wish. They have all taken the Reader’s side of things-- even his dear Bertrude, to his dismay. She instructs him ( _nnrghs_ omitted) to see things from eir perspective-- an admonition that stings, objective as he prides himself on being. He had hoped, of course, that as time passed ey would come to share his conviction in the Plan; and, for the most part, he believes ey truly do have the spark of that conviction. Almost unprompted by him, in fact. What he had not accounted for was the fact that ey could do so while still treating him like a noxious centipede.

But if there is one thing C. Volfred Sandalwood is not, it is easily cowed. He may restrict his hours….somewhat more than he would be given to before; Saps are social creatures, planted in groves and gardens, and they find a certain degree of interaction with their diurnal companions pleasant. The mere fact that he has made this concession bothers him. But he refuses to shut himself away in a corner and hide. Two can be stubborn and immovable, and he _will_ have the full use of his own Triumvirate’s Blackwagon, stars all be damned. (A rare curse-- this pettiness must be getting to him more than he had thought.) 

So it is that one cold and rainy night, somewhere in the middle of the Deathless Tempest, Volfred is sitting in the kitchen of the Blackwagon over tea and his pipe as Hedwyn emerges from his shared quarters.

He’s not one for late nights, usually; Volfred frowns and wonders privately if something is the matter. The young man is bleary-eyed as he patters around the kitchen, banging pots and pans in his own quest for late night refreshment. Is there still water in the kettle, he mumbles? Volfred answers aye.

Downside tea is thin and lengthened with various bitter-tasting herbs, several of which are psychoactive for humans. Volfred himself admits that it’s an acquired taste. A far cry from the teashop fare of the city where he once taught, any blend you liked and sparkling conversation….he lets himself drift off into a memory as Hedwyn tastes his brew and makes a face. When he comes back again, he finds, unusually, that instead of having gone back into the room he shares with Sir Gilman, he’s settled down across from him at the rickety kitchen table.

Well, Sir Gilman is reputed to talk extensively in his sleep. Perhaps he merely wants a bit of quiet. But his eyes are shadowed in that way animals get when they’ve barely slept, and he stares into midair in a way that Volfred dislikes. They have a Rite tomorrow, at the Isle of Khaylmer, and he believes Hedwyn is to participate.

Something the matter, my boy?

A long moment passes with no answer. Just as he’s about to discount the possibility of receiving one altogether, Hedwyn speaks.

About the Plan.

Ah. He feels some trepidation despite himself; shifts his roots around a bit uneasily. What specifically is it that is bothering him?

Eight of us, right? The Eight Scribes, come again.

It hangs in the air. Volfred merely nods.

That’s who we’re supposed to be.

I did select you personally for the part you would play, if that is what is on your mind. I do know the Master-General’s role is a rather large one to fill.

He laughs, uncharacteristically bitter. He’s what everyone was supposed to be, on the Bloodborder. The perfect soldier, right? Dutiful, brave, uncomplaining....someone like Jodi.

Volfred frowns. Jodariel has her own part to play. She had been the first to receive her freedom, and his agents inform him that even now she is working tirelessly. Gol Golathanian’s replacement should--

Definitely not be a deserter.

There are different ways of being dutiful, just as there are different ways of being strong or brave or clever. Under a government such as the one we had, is true duty to ourselves and our fellow citizens not to refuse orders?

Right, but you can say that about Jodi. What she did….I’d never have been brave enough to do it, but I know it was the right thing. I let a lot of people get killed for someone I had barely met.

He stirs his tea glumly with his spoon. I don’t even know if she remembers me.

This is rather close to some memories about which Volfred would rather not open up. Questions of love are….well, he says none of it. He’ll keep these secrets as long as he can. Instead, he redirects: why is it that Hedwyn feels specifically that he is unworthy?

I just said. Admit it, you chose me because you needed a Nomad and I was the first decent one you could find.

He most certainly did not-- the very implication behind the words makes him scowl. In fact, he puts his concern to words: is this what the Reader has been telling him?

It’s not, actually. Ey’re doing this because ey believe in it, even if you two don’t get along. Hedwyn sips his tea, makes another face-- a thoughtful one. Ey said I was like Gol too. I don’t know why.

That the two of us agree with each other on this despite everything should indicate to you that it is true.

They sit for a long, silent moment. Volfred smokes his pipe.

I don’t know much about him, Hedwyn admits. Beyond what everyone can tell you. Never got much school before I enlisted, never was one for history.

Well, that’s not something you should ever say around a history professor, is it? Volfred leans forward, feels himself entering a lecture. As it so happens, he says casually, he’d been quite the student of the Master-General, when he was a young Sap. Of all the Scribes, really. As a sprout he’d traveled from the Westerly Woods of his birth all the way to the Spiral Sanctum to study their exploits with the Commonwealth’s great historians. And Golathanian particularly had caught his imagination, though he’d also found an appreciation of the Blessed-Born Triesta, in time. That, more as he matured, and came to hold the beliefs that even now form the tenets underlying his Plan.

The Spiral Sanctum had been a young city, but built on the ruins of one of the Empire’s greatest ports. The mix of old and new in the city’s architecture was quite beautiful, and there were old city walls, mausoleums and triumphal arches, the remains of the old harbor infrastructure, even an old amphitheater where they had taken lessons on fine days. The city’s university held many Imperial artefacts, as well, dating back even to Sahr’s early expansion-- among them a single tassel of the Tattered Mantle.

Allegedly, he clarifies, at Hedwyn’s skeptical look. Its provenance had never been verified.

The Spiral Sanctum had also been a hotbed of literacy, when he was young. Many of the oldest books, those actually from the Empire, had escaped destruction; the countless daring scholars who had saved them had been almost without exception exiled. Devastating to live through, and only strengthening his resolve to preserve books wherever he may find them. But regardless. A bit of a digression.

What he had meant to say was that, in his youthful studies, he’d read a great deal of the man himself; many of the works had been actually written during his life, or shortly after the foundation of the Commonwealth. As well, there had been plays, poetry, even statues and paintings of him preserved. He would be happy to tell Hedwyn of anything he knew.

Paintings? For some reason this is what piques Hedwyn’s curiosity. So we really know what he looked like?

As much as we can know what any person looks like from an artistic depiction, but yes. He’s actually quite well documented among the artwork of the time. Rather an important man, and he did win a number of victories and have quite a few monuments and arches dedicated to them.

Hedwyn has gone from politely interested to rapt. Volfred scours his sapling memories. There had been a particular portrait of him, painted just after his appointment as Master-General, and to his surprise he finds he can recall it quite clearly:

We know that he was a man of average stature. And we know that men were shorter then, in the Empire; he would have been about Hedwyn's height. His build, if anything, belied his great strength; for of course no one was stronger than the Master-General, in body or in spirit. To Volfred he had seemed long-limbed and graceful-- Hedwyn's height, indeed, and broad enough in the shoulders, but straight and slender like a Sap. As if it were impossible for him to move in any way but with purpose.

What else. Dark hair, and curly, nothing like Hedwyn's. Worn short with a clean shaven face, the late Imperial fashion. (This is accompanied by a pointed look at Hedwyn's stubble.) But skin more or less the same tone, and very similar dark eyes. The painters had given him a long, somewhat mulish face; thick eyebrows, a stubborn nose and jaw. He had almost always been shown in military garb. In the painting that had so impressed a young Volfred it had been armor, intricately inlaid, as befit a man of his status.

A long pause. Is that all? Hedwyn asks, and in a rare occasion it catches Volfred by surprise. Even more rare, he is forced to ask what his companion means.

What was he like? That's just what he looked like-- and he seems ordinary, and also nothing like me. What did the painters make him seem like?

He was, Volfred concedes, an ordinary Sahrian man; indeed, that is rather the point of his tale, is it not, to show that within any of us is the capacity for greatness in all things, as well as to be greatly misguided. But he frowns, and is forced to think, to articulate what had so caught his eye as a sapling, what made the memory latch in his mind for so many years.

He was very handsome. For a young C. Volfred, who had not yet learned to appreciate the way most human men looked, he was the handsomest man in the world. There was a great earnestness in his face, and a great seriousness; something about him was merely pleasing to look at, comforting almost, in a way. Every painting showed him the same way: he stared directly into the viewer's eyes, intent and stubborn and proud. Even in scenes with the Emperor, where he might have been looking at his Liege. In books-- when he had been able to read books-- it had been said that many at court thought the Master-General stupid. He had not been able to believe it. There was an undeniable intelligence in those eyes, and more than that a sheer will, and something about him, so still and singular and composed--

He is rambling. He pauses again, searches all his words.

He had been intently himself. That was what was so pleasing; that was what the paintings and statues conveyed. A man who had no idea how to pretend, to dissemble, who could be nothing but exactly what he was. You could believe the young man in the portrait was the one to carry the Empire on his back. You could believe that he was the one to plant the little seed of Commonwealth.

He was himself. And that, regardless of physical appearance, was what C. Volfred Sandalwood, so many years later, had seen in Hedwyn.

Hedwyn is silent for a long moment. Then he drains his tea, stands, and puts his mug and spoon on top of the precarious tower of dirty dishes. Thanks, he says quietly, and then he turns and leaves the kitchen.

Volfred remembers this interaction for quite some time.

**Author's Note:**

> The entire premise of this fic was inspired by a line in laughingpineapple's Hold up the mirror: "All documents pertaining to his life – paintings, statues, plays… ...books, he added in a conspiratorial voice – could only date back to his time at court and on the battlefield, at the head of his golden legions." Definitely read that fic, and I hope I did y'all's man alright in this first time I've ever written him.


End file.
